Mediterranean Science, Policy, Research & Innovation Gateway

The Monitoring Committee for the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation in RTD (Hungary, June 2011) strongly underlined the need of adapting the Euro-Mediterranean research and innovation policies and cooperation to the changing Mediterranean society. The Mediterranean Science, Policy, Research & Innovation Gateway MED-SPRING -, built on the previous experience of the INCO.NET MIRA, but adapted to the new reality of the Euro-Mediterranean policy and the general orientations defined in the Euro-Mediterranean Conference of Barcelona (2-3 April 2012), is focused on three societal challenges (Energy, High Quality Affordable Food, and Scarcity of resources) and aims at tackling policy objectives by creating a dialogue and coordination platform of governmental institutions, research organisations, associations and civil society.

It also addresses capacity building and analysis of societal challenges to increase respectively research capacity and shared knowledge and cooperation on common areas of interest. It will support synergies and networking to strengthen joint activities and joint cooperation in EU programmes, and monitoring regional RTD cooperation and policies.

Financed by the 7th Framework Programme of the EC, involving 28 partners from all around the Mediterranean, and supported by the Monitoring Committee for the Euro-Mediterranean S&T Cooperation in RTD (MoCo), MED-SPRING gathers expert voices including leading scientific communities as well as policy makers and stakeholders, bridging policy and research.

The specific objectives of the Project are thus: enhancing EU-MPCs co-ownership in research cooperation; creating synergies in order to reduce fragmentation of research actions; involving the civil society in the institutional dialogue on research and innovation; developing cooperation instruments to tackle societal challenges with a view to sustainability; supporting research and innovation capacity building through comprehensive training and contributing build an Euro-Mediterranean shared knowledge space in order to develop common EU-MPCs planning capacity and a sustainable regional RDT policy and cooperation.

The principal objectives of MED-SPRING are:

  • to develop and support the dialogue between EU - MPCs by bringing together policymakers and stakeholders from each MPC and EU Member states to create a dialogue and action platform to identify common interest in research areas,
  • to set up S&T priorities,
  • support capacity building activities and enhance the interaction between different cooperation instruments of the EC to promote actions in order to monitor, develop and contribute to creating synergies among the various S&T cooperation programmes between MPCs/EU and foster the participation of the MPCs in the Framework Programme.